What’s your summer reading plan, and what’s the plan for your children? Two of my four have summer reading time charts from school. Will this be another year when I determine that every evening at X time will be “quiet reading time,” only to have it endlessly thwarted by things like impromptu s’mores and meteor showers? (And how can that really be bad?) I want them to read. They (mostly) want to read. But oh, we have a terrible time with those charts.

I know what we’ll be reading, at least in June. There it is, piled high. For me, the list includes Stephen King and “The Year of the Gadfly” to “Dinner: A Love Story” (which combines memoir with family recipes and hits all my buttons) and “Julia’s Child” (a comic novel by a friend and neighbor, about a mother and her organic food business: this one mocks all those same buttons). I’d read the Motherlode contributor Joel Yanofsky’s wonderful memoir of his son’s autism and his enforced journey to adulthood, “Bad Animals,” if I hadn’t already.

And, of course, Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer’s “Between the Lines” and Carl Hiaasen’s “Chomp,” which I’ll read with my soon-to-be 11-year-old son. His summer reading plans include rereading all the “Harry Potter” books — again. (“Screech Owls” is his, too: it’s the hockey equivalent of “The Hardy Boys.”) Mine, for him, include leaving tempting copies of “The Hobbit” and “The Lightning Thief” nearby. My soon-to-be 8-year-old daughter is reading “The Doll People,” and one of my two rising first graders is enjoying James Kochalka’s “Johnny Boo” and “Dragon Puncher” graphic novels, while the other reads every single available “Nate the Great.”

I’m also planning on reading “A Wrinkle in Time” out loud, as soon as we wrap “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”

What are your summer reading plans, for yourself and for your children? And if you have those dreaded reading charts, how do you cope? Does 20 minutes a day of easily tracked reading fit into every family’s day except ours? They do read, but how many 6-year-olds pay attention to where and for how long? Me, I’ve never exactly understood why they (or, more relevantly, I) should. I prefer the rising third grader’s option: a space to list all the books she reads, along with “one thing you liked” and “one thing you didn’t.”

Share books and plans here and on Facebook, and please, post tweets with the #summerreading hashtag if Twitter’s your thing. And watch this space on Friday, June 8, for my interview with Ms. Picoult and her daughter, Ms. van Leer. What’s it like to write a book with your famous and prolific mom? I promise to ask.

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more